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Do you ever feel like you are doing "all the things" and still staying stuck in your physical goals? There are a few different common denominators I have found over my years of working as a fitness professional, and some of them may surprise you! Tune in to go over what they are, and actions you can take so that you are back on your way to seeing the changes you seek!
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What is Fit for Hiking?
Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a long time fitness professional and midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for hiking podcast. Hello everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the fit for Hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady. Today we are going to be diving into the topic of why the heck you're working out, doing the things, and not seeing the results that you want to see. This is something that I have been very familiar with, both in my own journey and for clients that I've worked with over the years. Also just working in group fitness, um, you know, talking to people who have been coming for years, and either they've stopped seeing results or they just have never seen results despite doing the work and being consistent with their workouts. So today we're going to get down to the nitty gritty of ten reasons why you are working out, but not necessarily seeing the physique changes that you want to see. So first, let me preface this by saying that even if you're not seeing your body changing, maybe in the way that you want it to change, you are still receiving countless benefits. When you are exercising consistently, your health is still being benefited. You're still gaining strength, endurance, cardiovascular benefits, bone density, helping out your metabolism long term. There are so many benefits to exercising that go far beyond just how your body looks. Okay, so let me start off by saying that I'm not trying to say because you've been working out and not seen physical changes, that everything you've been doing has been totally a waste. Because that is so not true. But this episode is for the person who maybe you are experiencing the mental health benefits, the physical health benefits, but you're just not really seeing your body change and you'd like to get a little bit leaner, look a little bit more defined, or just overall see the the benefits of all the hard work you're doing. That's totally understandable and nothing wrong with that. So let's get into ten reasons why you might not be seeing your body changing despite working out okay. Number one, and this is a big one, is you're not ever progressing in your workouts. And what I mean by this is that your frequency, intensity, load and time and attention are the same month after month. So frequency, you're kind of just always doing the same amount of working out. Um, you're never increasing there. You're not increasing the intensity, and your workouts never feel harder. You always are kind of challenging yourself the same amount you're allowed, the amount of resistance that you're putting your body under with your strength training is kind of the same all the time. Like you've been using the same weights for months or years. Even like I saw this one big time in group classes, because a lot of times, especially the women who would come would use the exact same weights for the same exercises month after month, year after year. Like literally never increase the load, increase the challenge on the muscles. So obviously you're going to hit a plateau if your body adapts to that load right time under tension, the amount of time that you're spending with your muscles under tension never progresses, never changes. So if all of these variables are kind of just the same, over time your body will adapt. Our body's always adapting at the stimuli that we're throwing at it. Um, which is really cool. But it means that in order to continue to see progress, you have to consistently. Progress, your intensity, your load, your frequency, or your time under tension. Something has to change in order to continue seeing changes. So if you aren't ever progressing in your workouts, this is a big one. Why? You would see potentially a plateau. So if you're someone who maybe you initially started a program or started a workout regimen and you did see results for a while, but the results have stopped, it is likely due to the fact that you're not progressing in your workouts, and this isn't meaning that you need to change the weight and go up in, let's say, your bicep curls every single week, but over time, you should be progressing at least a little bit, especially in your bigger lift. So thinking about like your big compound lifts such as deadlifts, squats, lunges or split squats um, chest presses or chest flys, rows, pull ups, you should be able to do more than you used to be able to do in those big lifts, especially those are the ones where you're going to be able to progress more quickly because you have more muscle tissue in those lifts versus like biceps, triceps, shoulders, calves. Those are smaller muscles, right? So you're not going to progress quite as, as often with those lifts. Okay, so if you're never progressing in your workouts, you're going to struggle. And this is where having a progressive, overload style program that is actually mapped out for you. And you're not just winging it, you're not just showing up at a class all the time. The thing with class is, and here's the thing, I love group classes for the camaraderie. They're fun. They're energetic. If they get you into a good routine, amazing. However, you might see diminishing returns. And if you have big physique goals, you know, if you're not just doing it for the health benefits and like generally staying in shape, if you have like some serious physique goals, you might find that group classes will have diminishing returns simply because the programming usually is random. And it's just kind of based on like whatever the coach that night wants to do. And they might not even be in sync with like, what the coach yesterday did or the coach two day, two days ago did when you were in there. And it might be really repetitive, or you might completely skip certain muscle groups that you really should be hitting multiple times a week. You might not have the ability to progress in a class setting, so if that sounds like you, it might be worth it for a while. And you can still do some classes here and there, but for a while it might be worth it to follow a progressive, overload style strength training program. If you are serious about pushing through this plateau and seeing some physique changes. Number two is you're simply less consistent than you think you are going to the gym or working out. However you do that, whether it's at home, at a gym, at a at a studio, whatever your modality, if you're doing it once a week, one week, and then the next week four times, and then the next week one time and the next week two times, the next week zero. The next week three. That's pretty inconsistent. You're really going to want to be consistently working out 3 to 4 plus times a week. If you are serious about physique change, the more serious you are about seeing changes, the more seriously you have to take your workouts. Unfortunately, and like, you'll see this theme repeated in so many different areas as we go through why you might not be seeing changes, but unfortunately, a lot of people want to put forth like a see effort and see like an A plus physique. This just isn't realistic. So if you're not willing to go to the gym or work out from home wherever it is at least four plus times a week, consistently over time, week after week, month after month, year after year, you're probably going to feel frustrated by your lack of results, but it is directly in correlation to the effort and the time and the consistency that you're putting forth. So really, we can only blame ourselves like we ought to show up and do the work, or we're not going to see the results that we want to see. So that consistency piece is absolutely huge. And yes, there's going to be weeks where maybe you only work out twice a week and and something's better than nothing. Like if you can only do two times a week, you do it like make it happen on those two occasions, but just kind of gauge your expectations accordingly, like I've known over the last few years that my time for working out has gone down significantly because I've been really focusing on my business. I have a two year old. I'm only working, you know, three days a week. The other days I'm with my daughter. My time is very divided, so I don't have as much time spent towards working out. That changes my expectations of how I expect my physique to look, because I know I'm not giving it an A-plus effort right now. And that's okay. But I can accept that. You know, I'm putting in about a B plus A minus to B plus effort. Most weeks, and that's kind of what I can expect as far as like how my physique looks. I'm not going to look absolutely ripped and shredded year round most likely. But I'm pretty happy with my body because I really do put in a decent effort most of the year. Okay, so let's move on to number three your sedentary outside of your workouts. Here's the deal. If you're only spending time on your feet moving around during your workout, which is maybe 45 minutes to an hour, a couple days a week, and then the rest of the time you're kind of just sitting around and not focusing on looking for ways to increase your non exercise energy expenditure. Then it's going to be harder to especially see fat loss. Fat loss and uneven weight maintenance are very, very much directly correlated to the amount of moving that you're doing. And not just from your workout. You're walking, your pacing, you're fidgeting, you're just movement throughout the day, whether that's cleaning or playing with your kids or walking your dog, or walking around a store, pacing while you're on the phone or going on a lunch walk date with somebody. Things like that really do add up and make a big difference. So if you are hitting a plateau and you are hitting all of your workouts, the first thing that I tell my clients in that case is let's examine your steps every day consistently and your intake every day consistently, which we'll get into next. So pay attention to your non exercise movement. If you find that you're always looking for ways to skip moving and like avoid getting up off the couch, then you might be moving less than you think you are. So wearing some sort of pedometer or tracker is a really good way to see kind of where you're at. And the standard, like ten steps, is not always, you know, an appropriate target for everybody. For instance, if you have been consistently walking 12,000 steps a day and then you're. You know, just kind of always staying there. Then you might need to increase slightly if you're looking to elicit a response with fat loss versus somebody who maybe walks 5000 steps a day, well, we might be able to elicit a little bit of a push through that plateau just by increasing to 7 to 8 K steps a day. Okay, so it really depends on what your body has adapted to over time. Number four is that you're just kind of guessing or eyeballing on your intake, your food intake. Okay. So ultimately, the only way that you can see fat loss is through a calorie deficit. So we really need to be aware of how much we're consuming. And not just, oh, I think I'm eating pretty healthy or oh, I think my portions are pretty good. Really. Get honest with yourself and track consistently to see where you're at. And then you have to be willing to subtract if you want, uh, you know, about a pound a week loss, then you're going to need to subtract 500 calories a day from your maintenance calories It's going to cost you. It's going to be a sacrifice. You're going to be a little bit hungry. It's not going to feel awesome all of the time. But again, like if you want to see big results, you have to put forth some pretty big efforts for a little while. It's not forever, but in order to move the needle, you might need to be perfect with it for a while. As perfect as you possibly can. Um, you know, if you're only giving 70 to 80% effort, you're going to get 70 to 80% results. So. Being really exact for even just a month or two with your nutrition can make all of the difference. I mean, it's crazy, even like a week of being really on track and and minimizing calories and really focusing on hitting all of the targets with your workouts. You're walking your protein, your calorie intake, all of that can make a big difference, even just in a week. If you are really, really on it and don't make excuses for yourself anymore, okay? The next one, number five, is you have no idea how much protein you're getting. So often when we bring new clients into the program, they have literally no awareness of how much protein they have on a daily basis. And typically a lot of females are under eating protein quite a bit. So if you've never been conscious to track or just become aware of how much protein is in the foods that you're typically intaking, then you're probably going to be under eating protein without even realizing it. So a general rule of thumb, if you have never paid attention to this before, is at least shoot for 100g a day. You really need to at least be getting 100g a day as a female. If you are easily hitting 100g a day, then you can shoot for about a gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. So if you're shooting to weigh £130, maybe you're shooting for about 130g of protein a day, but you want to ease into it. That's why I say start with 100g as your goal. Because if you're eating 40g a day, which honestly is pretty unfortunately common for for people when they're first starting out in something like this. Um, you know, if you're eating 40g a day consistently, 130 sounds insane and totally not doable. So set mini goals for yourself. Start by shooting for 60g a day. Once you've done that consistently for a month, then shoot for 80, then shoot for a hundred and you'll find that it does get easier over time. But having enough protein, it's going to ensure that you're actually getting the most out of your workouts and keeping enough lean mass on you while you're focusing on that physique change. Okay. All right. Next one is you're only focused on calorie burn in your workouts. If you're someone who's all about the burn, you're all about the sweat. You're all about how many calories did the thing tell me that I burn? Or how many did my watch tell me that I burned? You're really not focusing on the right thing. You're focusing on manually burning calories, which is exhausting. It's like working a job where you have to work, get paid hourly versus getting some sort of passive income. Right? Think about how much time you're trading, just trying to manually burn calories when you could set up a system that's going to allow you to increase your daily calorie burn significantly without having to trade your time for your efforts, and by doing that. We're really focusing on muscle versus just manual calorie burn through cardio type machines. Always running, always doing things as fast as humanly possible. Okay. So if you find that you need to like, do 4 to 5 cardio workouts a week or you feel like you just gain weight so fast, then you're probably not focusing on your metabolic health and you're just focusing on that manual calorie burn. And that's going to be exhausting over time. So really switching your focus to trying to build muscle so that you can have a higher resting metabolic rate, you're doing yourself so many long term favors. This past month, I hardly got to work out at all. I worked out maybe one time in one whole month, which is pretty rare for me. Like, I'm very consistent with my workouts and I have been my whole life, so it's very rare that I spend a whole month without working out. But I was traveling in Italy and I was really sick on the back end of the trip, so I went about a month and did hardly any exercise at all. And at the end of it, guess what? My body hardly changed at all. I was still as lean. I weighed the same amount. It was a little bit weaker, but physique wise I did not change. And that's because I had set up for years now, a healthy metabolism for myself, where I don't have to manually burn calories through doing tons and tons of cardio in order to maintain my weight. And so freeing to realize that and to know that I can just live my life because I do the right things most of the time to set myself up for success. Um, so if you haven't ever focused on gaining muscle and taking a step back from just the cardio, cardio, cardio, it might be a big mental shift and it might be tough, but it is so worth it. And we've helped a lot of ladies do that in Mountain Metabolic, where they've shifted their focus and they actually see better results doing way less exercise because they're actually focusing on training smarter instead of just, you know, grinding it out in the gym seven days a week. Okay. Next one is number seven. Your weekends undo all of your weekday progress. Can I just let that sink in for a second? Because this is a very, very real thing. And this is something I struggled with for years in my 20s. I would restrict all week. And then on Friday I was like, yippee! I can like go nuts, I can go out, I can have all the drinks, all of the fun bar food. And I just completely undid all of the deficit that I had created that week from restricting. And it was a terrible cycle and a terrible way to treat my body, and I felt like I was starting over every single Monday. So really being honest and looking, tracking for a full week and looking at am I negating the deficit that I work to create during the week? Is there a big discrepancy between your weekdays and your weekends? If so, you're probably going to struggle a little bit and it's natural for there to be a slight calorie bump, a big increase on weekends you're going to see a bit of an increase because you're probably eating out more. You're doing more social things. However, if there's like a massive like thousand plus difference, then yes, you are going to probably maintain, if not consistently gain weight if there's that big of a discrepancy. So looking for ways of how you can make your weekdays feel less restrictive so you don't feel the need to binge on the weekends. And if it's not necessarily a binge situation, but you just find that you're like in a lot of social situations and calories just wreck up, look for ways to just cut back a little bit moderate while still enjoying the fun things, just maybe slightly less large portions. All right, number eight. You're not prioritizing sleep or stress management. Here's the deal. Sleep, or lack thereof, will affect your hunger and satiety hormones leptin and ghrelin. So if you are consistently getting poor quality sleep or not good enough sleep or not long enough sleep, then you're going to struggle to remain full and you're going to struggle with like snacking and cravings and things like that, which will then affect your ability to successfully stay on track with your nutrition. Stress management is another thing that you're going to want to look at, because if you're hitting all these boxes, but you are stressed to the max and your nervous system is dysregulated, you might still struggle with things like digestion, your hormones, um, your skin health, your bloating, your kind of inflammation in your face like just feeling puffy. Um, there's a lot of ways where you can see stress manifest in your body. So if you are not dealing with a big underlying stressor in your life, you can't exercise that. You have to deal with some root stuff because it's going to show up in your health one way or another. Number nine. Your body has adapted. This is a perfectly normal response, like we were talking about earlier when we were speaking on progressive overload and progressing within your workouts. Your body is going to adapt to both the exercise stimulus stimuli you throw out at the amount that you're moving every day, the amount that you're in taking on a consistent basis, and changes that take place in your body over time. So if you have lost weight, your new maintenance is lower because you are a smaller human now. So you require less calories to maintain your body weight than you did previously when you were maybe a little bit larger. These are normal adaptations and can be expected. It's not that your body is failing you. It's not that your metabolism is broken. It's just that these are these are things that are going to happen. You're going to have to work a little bit harder. I always say new level, new devil. Like once you reach a new level in your fitness or you get to a goal weight, you just have to work a little bit harder. You're going to have to level it up as far as your efforts in order to get to another level. And so you kind of have to decide like what is enough for you, you know, say you got down to a weight that you really happy with, but now you're like, oh, maybe I should lose another 5 to £10. You're going to have to work a heck of a lot harder to lose that next 5 to £10. You just are. The smaller you get and the more weight you lose, the harder it becomes. So you have to decide, is this 100% necessary and worth it? Will I really actually be happier in my body, or am I just kind of chasing that new level, that new high? Because with every new level comes new sacrifices, and you're just going to have to work that much harder. So your body adapting is something that you can expect, and just know that it will make things a little bit tougher, but you still can see progress. You might just have to work harder than you did before. So, for example, say that you are a female who's kind of on the small side and you're trying to lose about 5 to £10, and you found that your maintenance calories typically are about 1800 to 1900, and you've been in a deficit for a while at 1500, slowly losing weight successfully. And now you've reached a point where you're kind of at a plateau, you might need to spend a little bit of time at maintenance to kind of let your body recuperate, give your body a break, give your nervous system a break, and then you might need to just go a little bit lower in your deficit in order to reach another level. And that's again where you have to decide, is it worth it for me to cut my calories even lower? Because everybody's different? As far as what that point is going to be. And while it sucks to have to eat less than 1500 calories to see a change, that is the reality for some really small females. So I don't say that because I recommended I say it because it can be true. And that's just kind of the reality of it. So you have to decide if it's worth it to you to go to that new level. Okay. And number ten, you're expecting unrealistic timeframes with your progress. If you're sitting here and saying, okay, I've been working out consistently for three months and my body hasn't changed that much, you might just need to be patient and then kind of go through this list and look at, am I being realistic with my intake? Am I underestimating my intake? Am I overestimating my movement every day? Am I actually pushing myself hard in my workouts to progress to the next level? All of these things. And if you actually are doing all of these things, then it really just might be a time thing, a patience thing, a consistency thing. Everybody's different as far as their the rate that their body Changes to these new stimuli. And some people I mean, you you've probably heard this said before where like a man will be like, oh, I stopped drinking soda and I lost £20 in a month. Like just something insane. Where like, I never drink soda and it's never been that easy for me to lose weight. But that's just the reality is, some people will see change so quickly from barely adjusting anything at all. And then others of us. It just is a lot harder and we have to put forth more effort. And so not comparing yourself to other people's timelines, but holding yourself accountable to say, where can I be honest with myself if I need to adjust anything? And if you're still just coming up short and you're like, I genuinely don't know, then talking with a coach or professional who can see maybe some blind spots and help you troubleshoot, it's going to be really, really helpful because we typically don't see ourselves as clearly as we might see like other people. And then where other people could do better. So all of this said, it's a lot. It's really sometimes hard to put it all together in a way that makes sense, and you really know that you're moving the needle. So this is why we have mountain metabolic coaching, because doing this on our own is really, really tough. And it requires a lot of introspection, a lot of dedication, a lot of consistency, a lot of mental battles and picking yourself back up, a lot of rerouting, a lot of adapting and being consistent through life crap that gets thrown your way that you cannot expect or anticipate, right? So if you feel like having a coach alongside you to guide you, to give you the tools to hold you accountable, to help you troubleshoot, to get you back on track when life inevitably happens, then check out the application link in the show notes. And I'm even going to give you guys a little bit of a discount. So listen up here if you are interested in coaching DMs at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page and just say podcast. If you DMs podcast, we will hook you up with a call to chat about coaching and you will get your first month of coaching half off. Okay, so that is a pretty dang good deal. So if you're listening to this, you can either apply and let me know on the call that, hey, like I heard you from the podcast, I'd love to take advantage of the deal. Or you can DM us at Fit Underscore for hiking and say podcasts, and we will reach out to help you set up your call. Okay. All right, you guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope to connect with each and every one of you. I so appreciate you listening to the show. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review really, really helps other people know that it's worth listening to. So we appreciate your help here there and I will talk with you guys in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at Pony Tail on a trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.